Law-and-Order Then and Now
Calls for and socialization into racist ideas of law and order aren’t new. Yes, they take distinctive forms once Nixon and Reagan use them. But these Presidents, like President Trump, don’t create ex nihilo; they draw upon racist law-and-order rhetoric that’s been part of the U.S. since its inception. Consider the racist, greed-perpetuating compromises baked into the Constitution, or the explicit endorsement of white Nationalism in the Naturalization Act of 1790. Both reveal the U.S.’s founders intended for white supremacy to suffuse the laws and order of their experimental herrenvolk democracy.
But let’s pay closer attention. Notice that Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Trump employ Christian rhetoric and symbols to spread their racist calls. Notice their efforts to wed Christianity and white supremacy. Or, more accurately, notice their efforts to remind us of the centuries-old marriage these two have had. These Presidents and their policy advisors know that Christians have been endorsing and socializing each other to adhere to racist conceptions of governance to the point of including racist law-and-order rhetoric in their catechisms. Consider this Catechism for Slaves from The Southern Episcopalian (Charleston, S.C., April, 1854).
Q. Who keeps the snakes and all bad things from hurting you?
A. God does.
Q. Who gave you a master and a mistress?
A. God gave them to me.
Q. Who says that you must obey them?
A. God says that I must.
Q. What book tells you these things?
A. The Bible.
Q. How does God do all his work?
A. He always does it right.
Q. Does God love to work?
A. Yes, God is always at work.
Q. Do the angels work?
A. Yes, they do what God tells them.
Q. Do they love to work?
A. Yes, they love to please God.
Q. What does God say about your work?
A. He that will not work shall not eat.
Q. Did Adam and Eve have to work?
A. Yes, they had to keep the garden.
Q. Was it hard to keep that garden?
A. No, it was very easy.
Q. What makes the crops so hard to grow now?
A. Sin makes it.
Q. What makes you lazy?
A. My wicked heart.
Q. How do you know your heart is wicked?
A. I feel it every day.
Q. Who teaches you so many wicked things?
A. The Devil.
Q. Must you let the Devil teach you?
A. No, I must not.
This catechism isn’t colorblind. “Master” and “mistress” are functionally equivalent to “whites”; “slave” is a metonym for “Black” (see Noll). Therefore, this catechism inculcates a racist ideology supporting the law and order a white nationalist plantation economy requires as if that ideology and accompanying legal structure were equivalent to God’s Law, a law promulgated throughout human history. After all, didn’t Adam and Eve labor in the fields for their massah?
We could replicate examples like the Slave Catechism ad nausem—all the way to today. For as Kenneth Nunn demonstrates: “Law organizes white society; then it helps maintain that society through both physical and ideological coercion.” This physical and ideological coercion includes the manipulation of Christian signs and practices—catechesis included.
If we’re going to love the oppressed and the least of these—as the one with all authority on heaven and on earth commands—we Christians better remember who is King, discern and obey His call, and denounce the actions and racist rhetoric designed to make us obey massah rather than King Jesus.
